Saturday, May 30, 2015

Celtic Streissand Effect

Somebody probably still remembers Novaya Gazeta, and Anna Politkovskaya. The latter was murdered about a century ago, and the paper itself has met some hard times in Russia. Politkovskaya wrote many articles in Novaya Gazeta about some probable mischiefs from Russian government's side in Chechen War. Murderers were never caught, but she got a lot of attention for her articles. Russia still doesn't really excel on the transparency level.

Then there was this website based solely on donations, and they torrented US diplomatic cables around the web. Julian Assange is wanted in the USA for spying (or maybe not), and in the Sweden for a (alleged) rape. Wikileaks produced papers that showed that everything is not so black and white in war, and probably never will. USA government was not very happy with this issue, but seems that Julian Assange is too liked person for drone attacks.

Then there is Edward Snowden. Also a hero of free speech, but unfortunately plenty of times confused with Julian Assange as seen on John Oliver show. Snowden is still alive, and the leaks are still out there.

In Ireland, you would not except that kind of silencing would go through unless it's blasphemy which is still a crime in Ireland, except it just completely did. It seems that the local court has just decided that local media should not give out any information about Denis O'Brien's involvement in local corruption (alleged, or not). When a member of the parliament Catherine Murphy brought this (alleged) suspicion up in the Dáil (Irish Parliament), no local newspaper dared to published her speech, although it should be normal journalistic process just to quote somebody.

Irish High Court decided that his past should not be reported in newspapers at all. It started when RTE was about to bring out some old stuff from his past, and his lawyers just run in there, and for some odd reason actually won the hearing. Except for broadsheet.ie which still loans MP Murphy's speech from the Dail.

Hopefully Mr. Denis O'Brien and his lawyer's will hear about the Streisand Effect. It usually ends up when trying to shut up people in the internets that the voice actually gets louder.